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It shows the difference between the UK’s actual
unemployment rate, and estimates of the “structural”
unemployment rate, also known as the “NAIRU” (the non-accelerating inflation
rate of unemployment), from 1970 to the end of the Office of Budget Responsibility's forecast period. This difference is sometimes described as cyclical
unemployment, or the “unemployment gap.”
Here’s another chart showing all three variables: actual unemployment, the NAIRU, and the gap (see note at end on sources for the NAIRU).

Why does the unemployment gap matter? Well, as the name implies, the NAIRU is an
estimate of the level of unemployment that you would expect if the economy were
stable, with inflation neither rising nor falling. If the economy were roughly on trend, with
inflation stable near the 2% target, unemployment should be about at the NAIRU.

Put another way, the NAIRU is a measure of the level of
unemployment resulting from the supply side of the economy - workers’ skills, how the labour market
works, how competitive firms are, etc; things that change only relatively
slowly over time. The unemployment gap
measures how much extra (or less) unemployment there is as a result of
macroeconomic conditions – i.e. cyclical unemployment resulting from labour
demand, or lack of it. In other words,
if macroeconomic policy is broadly on track, the unemployment gap should be
small; it is a measure of the number of people who are not working because macro
policy isn’t either.

So what does the chart tells us? It says that the unemployment gap in the
aftermath of the 2008 recession will be larger and longer than any recession
since 1970 (which certainly means any recession since the war) including the
early 1980s, although there is probably some uncertainty about the 1980s estimates. It says that - on the official view and the official forecast - the
unemployment gap is a million now, rising, and will be higher in 2013 than now; and that even by 2015, fully
seven years after the recession began, it will be over 2 percent of the labour
force, about 650,000 people.

Why should this be the case?
It is something of a puzzle. It
is quite easy to understand why the gap rose in the 1980s and early 1990s. In
order to bring downward pressure on inflation - to correct previous macroeconomic policy errors - it was “necessary” for unemployment
to be above the NAIRU for a period. As Norman Lamont put it, unemployment is "the price we have to pay" to reduce inflation.
This was infelicitous politically, but expressed the consensus economic
doctrine (I was his speechwriter at the time, incidentally..).

It is far less obvious why this should be the case now. We don’t have an inflation problem going
forward; both NIESR and the Bank think it will fall below target. So the conventional view of macroeconomic policy
management, which the Treasury and the Bank still broadly subscribe to (see my
previous post) suggests that this just shouldn’t happen; and if it does,
something has gone badly wrong. Sensible
demand management should in principle ensure that, with stable inflation, the unemployment
rate should fall back to the NAIRU reasonably quickly. But that’s just not happening.

What do I conclude from this? Quite a lot; I think this is a remarkably
revealing chart.

First, it shows how the fall in the NAIRU – due to
successful labour market reforms, under governments of both parties, over the
past three decades – has obscured just how bad the post 2008 period is set to
be for the UK labour market. The
absolute level of unemployment does not look very high by the standards of the
1980s. But the amount that is down, not to structural problems, but to macroeconomic
developments and policy is unprecedented in the post war period.

Second, it clarifies what is sometimes a rather esoteric
debate about the “output gap”. NIESR is in broad terms somewhat more optimistic than the OBR on this (i.e., we think the output gap is
somewhat larger, so there is somewhat more spare capacity and policy can be somewhat looser). But it's complicated; there's room for debate, and everybody uses a different
methodology. What this chart shows is that what everyone can agree on is
that there are lots of people who are unemployed, not for structural reasons
but cyclical ones, and that this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable
future. If that doesn’t represent “spare capacity”, what does?

A third point is related to this one. It illustrates the
extent to which economists who say that there is little we can do through
macroeconomic policy at the moment, and must therefore turn to “supply side”
reforms, are simply missing the point. A
good example is the normally sensible Matt Oakley here. I’m all in favour of (evidence-based – many proposals are
not) supply side reforms. But the supply side of the UK labour market already
works pretty well; that's what the low NAIRU is telling us. It’s the demand side that is the main problem for the
foreseeable future.

Fourth, it puts to rest the issue of whether, in practical
terms, demand management can be achieved by monetary policy alone. There is an
argument, put most vigorously by Scott Sumner, that if demand is the problem,
monetary policy is always the answer.
It has implicitly been endorsed by the government here; for example
David Cameron recently said “we are fiscal conservatives but monetary radicals.” The theory is complicated, but I actually
find this argument very convincing intuitively; surely a central bank that can print
money can always ensure that households and firms spend enough? But yet here we are – "fiscal conservatism and monetary radicalism" promises persistently elevated levels of cyclical
unemployment for the foreseeable future. This is not what we should be looking for from the policy mix. I would not argue by any means that this is all the fault of UK policymakers (the Government and the Bank of England); wider macroeconomic factors clearly play a role. But I think it is reasonable to conclude that, regardless of the theory, in practice monetary policy is not enough.

Fifth, there is a risk that the forecast turns out wrong - but not in a good way. In other words, that the unemployment gap turns out to be lower than forecast, because the NAIRU turns out higher. We know that unemployment (especially youth unemployment) has "scarring" effects; i.e. that an individual experiencing a spell of unemployment has lower employment probabilities later in life, presumably because they become disconnected from the labour market, or their skills atrophy. But this is structural, not cyclical, unemployment; it adds to the NAIRU. In other words, if we accept a persistently high level of cyclical unemployment now, we will condemn ourselves to a persistently high level of structural unemployment in the future.

Finally, this last argument illuminates a point I’ve been trying to
make about the balance of risks attached to the current stance of fiscal policy. The
most sensible argument against short-term fiscal stimulus comes from those
(like Chris Giles in the FT, for example) who argue that the risks to credibility
of fiscal easing are large, while the potential gains are small. In my
view the risks are hugely exaggerated (see here and here). But my point here is about the other side –
the downside of inaction. If we do not
do something to boost labour demand now, we are not just taking a risk. We are accepting the likelihood of continuing
high levels of unemployment that will damage both many individuals and society
as a whole. [Those of a mathematical bent should read Brad Delong for a brilliant analysis of this point.]

In 1925 Winston Churchill
expressed his dismay that policymakers seemed to be “perfectly happy with at
the spectacle of Britain possessing the finest credit in the world
simultaneously with a million and a quarter unemployed.” We are making the same mistake. Ultimately, that is what this chart is telling us.

Note on construction of the NAIRU series: I have taken estimates of the NAIRU from the OECD (up to 2002) and HM Treasury/Office of Budget Responsibility (from 2003 on), when the series are in fact quite close. This isn't ideal; I wanted to use Treasury/OBR numbers throughout because I'm focusing on the "official" forecast and its implications, but they don’t seem to publish a consistent series (if the Treasury give me their estimates of the NAIRU back to the early 1970s, I will amend the chart accordingly). The key point here is that the OBR has recently restated its view that the current and prospective NAIRU is 5.25%. The unemployment forecast is also that of the OBR, so the chart gives the official forecast of the gap going forward, not NIESR’s, although assuming current policy the differences will probably not be huge. The OECD's estimates for the NAIRU going forward are somewhat higher, so the gap would be somewhat smaller; but this in part just reflects my final point above.

4 comments:

Based on the infallible internet, the UK is running the third highest central government budget deficit in the world. Greece and Egypt run higher budget deficits, but those two countries are (for now) special cases. Of countries that are not in an acute crisis threatening the whole functioning of the government, the UK is running the looses and most stimulative fiscal policy.

Some questions:- Why is anyone calling the UK fiscal policy "austerity?" Have I misunderstood the meaning of the word, does it in reality mean "opening the purse strings and spreading borrowed money around with abandon?" - Why is the high cyclical unemployment in the UK evidence of monetary policy not working and fiscal policy working?- The Germans argued strongly against fiscal stimulus and the UK strongly for it during the winter 2008-2009. If loose fiscal policy is the answer, why do we have low cyclical unemployment in Germany and high cyclical unemployment in the UK?

I am not in the camp that thinks the UK central government fiscal deficits have caused the high unemployment. (It was probably the finance industry going bust and the housing bubble deflating outside London.) But I find it preposterous that some people are using the high unemployment in the UK as evidence for, not against, fiscal stimulus working.

I'd like to voice two opinions here. First, I don't think that the UK economic performance in this crisis has been that bad. Second, I don't think we can call the actual UK fiscal policy so far "austerity".

On the first point, Figure 1.8 of the IMF document you link to shows that the UK has successfully avoided deflation. According to Figure 1.1, unemployment rate is much lower than that in PIGS and the US, and about the same as in EZ-ex-PIGS. On the negative side, industrial production growth is lagging EZ-ex-PIGS.

One should put these achievements in the context of the starting point. Compared to EZ-ex-PIGS, the UK had/has a greater housing bubble to deal with and much larger (relative to GDP) financial sector to support. For example, Germany didn't have a housing bubble and Finland doesn't have a bloated financial sector to support. The UK economic performance is in my opinion quite good, considering the starting point.

On the second point, so far the fiscal contraction in the UK has been smaller than in many other countries. According to Table 1.1, the deficit to GDP ratio has decreased in various countries from 2009 to 2011 as follows:

The UK fiscal policy has contracted my less than the fiscal policy in the rest of the Europe but more than in the US. Furthermore, if one assigns any significance to levels (in my opinion, one should), the UK is still running one of the highest deficit / GDP ratios in the world. I don't think there's any evidence that any fiscal contraction that deserves to be called "austerity" has happened in the UK.

I am sure that one can find some Nth derivative of the future expected government spending over some period by which the UK is contracting fiscally, but I would find the austerity argument much more convincing if simple measures of actual change in deficit / GDP would point in the same direction.

I have some real concern about the NAIRU series you show in this post (second figure):- the NAIRU series gets to 2003 and then stays *perfectly constant* over the next 13 years. I read your note on its construction but still couldn't figure out why you considered it constant: is it because "the OBR has recently restated its view that the current and prospective NAIRU is 5.25%."?That really sounds like the estimate of the *average* NAIRU over the years, NOT the *actual* yearly NAIRU.

- by looking at the graph before 2003, it is pretty clear that NAIRU has some degree of cyclicality (which are based, according to simple models, to technological growth -do you remember Kuznets' cycles?- and possible cycles of employment protection. The latter being probably endogenous to technological change and long-term demographic trends)

- since the early 2000s, we are probably facing an increasing trend in NAIRU (lots of signals for this fact, the most prominent being the shrink in labor productivity in Europe)

- THENyou are imposing on NAIRU a linear trend when it is in fact an increasing one, and then calculating the spread between it an actual unemployment, which is in fact positively correlated with NAIRU:

AS A RESULT:your findings, and most of the policy implications, may be driven by this mistake.